The Voice of Fashion
Culturally typical shindigs, colour as calling card, muchness as preferred language, decoration misstyled as glamour. How India is losing the game at Cannes
Cinema versus beauty-fashion brands, the latter a big wheel of the attention machinery at the Cannes Film Festival, leads to the ironic and the inevitable. Powerful, enduring films and their makers and some fine actors versus ambassadors. To spell it out—this year it means director Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light, Sandhya Suri for Santosh and Karan Kandhari for Sister Midnight are pitted (in the game of image, perception and attention) against actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sobhita Dhulipala, Kiara Advani, Urvashi Rautela, Priyanka Bajaj Sibal (winner of the Mrs India contest), influencers Ankush Bahugana and Masoom Minawala, and the soon to be sighted Anushka Sharma among others.
The former bunch, as the last few years remind us—representative of global and Indian cinema—are rated a success or failure based on a set of creative skills, which are not entirely random, schizoid or dependent on the bonfire of vanities. Nor, if one must add, is their projection to the world dependent on how the light falls on their faces when they face cameras or how their stylists define nightmares.
Influencers Masoom Minawala and Vishnu Kaul at the film festival.
The latter, however, are rated a success (or failure) depending almost entirely on something that is a hard to master math. How they look, what they wear, the increasingly elusive game between the brands that sponsor them, the airlines that give them first class free travel, the hotels that host them (so the Riviera at the back, patio photos), most pertinently, the designers and stylists who dress them.
Slap on the Face of Indian Fashion & Style
The last few days—our Instagram algorithms in India revealing our individual and collective social media demons—leave no ambiguity about who is gaming the attention machinery. And then for a majority of these “look-at-me stars” from India to lose this already skewed competition because of monstrosities of fashion and styling is a slap on the face. How hard it is to look good, despite a consortium of specialists recruited only to get this right
Whose face is being slapped then? That of Indian fashion (after all it is a representation of an important industry based in this country), stylists, image managers, marketing biggies who choose the actors and influencers for this all-too high wattage Cannes appearance, who pitch their brands on their backs, who take huge risks in perception politics. Are these people those who run the influencer-retail-fashion impact game in our country?
Four days down in the week, since the 77th Cannes Film Festival began at the French Riveira, it has been like sitting on a carousel watching a mix of comedy, embarrassment, disbelief and disappointment.
It is like a bad film playing out there on the red carpet. But that’s an easy conclusion. The more difficult is to analyse what’s going on.
Actor, veteran L’Oreal ambassador Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the flag bearing leader of most critiqued Cannes looks despite her stature, success, unique beauty, her “Queen” charisma (as her social media fans call her), is today more difficult to crack as a case study in the “look politics” than anyone else. Designer duo Shane and Falguni Peacock, who made two ensembles for her two appearances so far, and her team of stylists, not only seem to have debatable ideas on elegance or fashion for that matter, but presumably nobody advises the star well. Rai-Bachchan, whose face stands out however clumsy her dress, is now a unique case study in beauty brand marketing. There is perhaps no other face like hers. All the same, no other celebrity in the world has been consistently styled as chaotically as she is. No one else has been ridiculed as much as her. Regardless, she continues to appear at Cannes. We are clearly missing something which has to do with her impact and power—a reasoning, that is perhaps both culturally and commercially relevant for L’Oreal and thus one that needs careful examination.
The actor wearing Falguni Shane Peacock.
Red Carpet Rolls Away from Reality
Rai-Bachchan, though, is not the sum total of India at Cannes in 2024; and that’s the point of this story. Attention has never been an equal opportunity player on any red carpet. Dress and drama, wokeism and anti-wokeism, gender, class, age, body and beauty clash here routinely with resistance stories and emerging conflicts across the world. Not only of wars, a few of which scorch the globe as we speak, but of our long and losing wars with existential dilemmas and climate anxieties, protests narrated through the complex-confounding-consuming world of cinema.
While contemporary cinema is more “ours” in its exploratory inflections, more democratic in mirroring the argots of our post-pandemic anxieties. Even the surge of anti-wokeism, if one can call it that that is sickening the world. But glamour, especially on the red carpet from the Met Gala to Cannes, seems to be going the other way. It is charting a long distance away from what Gen Z republics want, what the world needs at the moment. India is calling for attention because it is not paying heed.
What we see unfold at Cannes through the Indian contingent today is emblematic of what we, as Indians, our designers and stylists continue to interpret as fashion and beauty, doggedly, despite the contradictions staring in our face. We still like it big, we still like it bold, we position colour as distinction even when it beomes a blur, we like pomp and drama. Sure. We always have. So, what has changed? That’s hard to pin down
Kitty parties in Ludhiana, soirées of the rich and richer in Hyderabad and a majority of Cannes looks from India mirror each other in metaphorical wear. Anyone watching will scream, because so many fragments of the looking glass lie strewn around, that reflect similar images. Lost in the debris are the Indian fashion industry’s ground-breaking strides in meaning-making, material experimentation and manufacturing abilities that have grown, risen and strengthened.
Ankush Bahuguna’s “colourful costumes”, as they are being termed, Urvashi Rautela’s crimson eyeshadow and rather tacky gowns, Priyanka Bajaj Sibal’s exotic bird dress in peach, yellow, pink—to Minawala’s effortful poses and influencer Vishnu Kaushal’s decorative sherwani. All of it only tell us that we like time-tried cultural stereotypes.
If you are still reading, you may wonder why there is no mention of actor Kiara Advani’s creamy arrival in a luxury car, singer Sunanda Sharma’s white anarkali set and Dhulipala’s purple dazzle.
Dhulipala is playing the same game of effortful excess, in my opinion. She has a fabulous figure, collarbones to die for, but her look-at-me politics is both Made in Heaven, a heaven which has been Made in India. At Cannes, we need our “look politicians” to reign in their arrival theatrics and assume power instead of pretty and pleasing body language. Advani, fingers crossed, let’s keep our eyes peeled. Sharma tops our votes so far. For colour, composure, a bit of cultural rootedness with her large nose pin but without doing backbends that bask in imaginary spotlight or forward bends to announce some “Queen” status.
